(My young children take swimming lessons at the local YMCA. The lessons are held from 7:00 to 8:00, and I always take them out for a quick meal beforehand at a diner. My kids finish their dinners before me, so while I polish off the rest of my food, my younger daughter amuses herself by asking me for pennies and dropping them into her half-full water glass. I don’t mind, because it is keeping her quiet, and I have every intention of removing the pennies from the glass before we leave, since I don’t want to leave them for the server to deal with. Then, I realise to my dismay that it is getting late.)
Me: “Oh, dear! We’d better get going, girls.”
(I stuff the last bite into my mouth, grab a $5 bill, and leave it on the table for a tip. We dash out to the car…)
Daughter: “Mummy, here, you forgot this.” *hands me the $5 bill*
Me: “Oh, no, honey, that was meant for our server. Quick, let’s run back into the restaurant and give it to her.”
(As we re-entered the diner, I realized two things. One, I’d forgotten to remove the pennies from my daughter’s water glass. Two, our poor server was looking at the pennies in dismay, thinking that they were her tip, and wondering what on earth she’d done to deserve that! I apologized profusely for the pennies and gave her the $5.)
(When I become pregnant with our third child, my husband and I decide to spring for the at-home blood test so we can find out the sex of the baby as soon as possible. Both the blood test and subsequent ultrasound show that we are having a boy. The rest of the pregnancy is spent preparing for our second boy: picking a name, buying cute boy clothes, etc. The day of the birth arrives — I have to have a cesarean — and we are excited and nervous to meet our son. I lay on the operating table, my heart rate accelerating with the anticipation of meeting my new baby. The wail of a newborn fills the air, and I find myself breathless for just a moment. “He’s here,” I think. But then I hear this:)
Doctor: “It’s a healthy baby girl!”
(The best part? She was born on April Fools Day. All I can say is, well played, baby girl. Well played.)
(My six-year-old son is reading a book about “boys who dare to be different.” He is going to take it to school for share time, so we’re looking for one of the stories he can explain to his classmates.)
Son: “I want to talk about this one!”
Me: “Oh, that’s Hans Scholl [WWII resistance fighter]. I don’t think your class is ready for learning about Nazis.”
Son: *excitedly* “But I like Nazis!”
Me: “Nooooo, we don’t like Nazis…”
Son: “No, I really like the Nazis!”
(I explained that Hans Scholl was fighting against the Nazis and gave him a brief rundown on why we really, really don’t like the Nazis.)
When my son was three, he was in his Sunday School class and looked down to find his shoe was untied. His teacher apparently wasn’t paying very close attention to him because he couldn’t get the teacher’s attention to get his shoe tied. So, he wandered off to find Mom or Dad to fix the problem.
He found me… playing bass on the platform for the worship service. Without a worry in the world, he wandered right up there to get his shoe tied.
That set a few hundred people laughing and I was mortally embarrassed, but he got his shoe tied and then someone helpful got him back to his class.
(I grew up with a huge extended family. None of my grandparents had fewer than seven siblings, so one is always running into great uncles, distant cousins, etc., seemingly everywhere. When I am two, I am in a mall with my mom and dad and we run into one of these distant cousins who recently moved from Ireland to the US. I have a very Irish name, have the overly curly brand of Irish hair, the works, and my dad is proud to be able to introduce me to his cousin.)
Dad: “[Cousin]! What a surprise! This is my wife, [Mom].”
Mom: “So nice to meet you!”
Cousin: *smiling down to me* “And who is this?”
Dad: *proudly* “This is our daughter, [My Name]. What do you say, sweetheart?”
(I look up at him with a big smile and brightly say:)
Me: “You’re a jacka**!”
(My mom told me later that she was so mortified that if there had been a hole nearby she would have tossed me in and walked away. They had no idea why I said that, where I had heard it since they never swore around me, and why I thought that was the best greeting for a newly introduced relative. The cousin laughed and took it in stride, but my mom never let me live that down.)
